


icarus

by rainonherwindow



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hellenistic Religion & Lore
Genre: M/M, icarus is in love with the sun, u know how it goes, welcome to hell friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainonherwindow/pseuds/rainonherwindow
Summary: He rises up, up, up. Helios’s radiant face fills his vision, fills his mind, and he doesn’t notice as his skin burns. Doesn’t notice as the wings’ straps dry and crack. Doesn’t notice as the wax starts to melt; drips onto his arms; scalds his pallid, freckled flesh.~ ~ ~ ~(icarus falls, in nine parts.)





	icarus

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on this for so long how is it only 5k
> 
>  
> 
> anyway, have some tragic boys.

_It starts like this:_

_sunlight rippling like silk on the wave tops, brilliant and blinding; the whole world gilded in gold as daybreak spills orange across the heavens; pools of warmth flooding the windows' breadths, kissing his skin as he swims in their glow._

* * *

 

He is five, clutching Ariadne's hand as he skips down the beach. They laugh, digging their toes into soft sand, chasing each other in and out of the warm surf. She is only a little older than him, but she is the smartest person ever, except for his dad, and she is his sister in all but blood; his very best friend.

"Look!" she says, pointing to sky and squeezing his fingers. The clouds above are bold: dark grey and blue, edged in blooming pastel and glowing white. From behind their pillow forms, beams of light shoot outwards, straight and true. Icarus thinks it is almost as though they are escaping – as though the sun is too great, too beautiful, and is setting its delicate cage aflame. "Helios is dancing in the clouds."

"But there's no music," Icarus tells her, worried. "How can he dance without any music?"

Ariadne smiles, warm as the sea-foam on their feet. "Then he'll need us to help him, won't he?"

She begins to sing – a little crackly and off-tune, maybe, but light and happy – and pulls Icarus into a springing dance. Ariadne's feet fly like they are winged; she helps guide his smaller, far less graceful limbs with a laugh. Their voices bounce across the beach and over the glittering waves.

 

* * *

 

He is eight, but his father still never talks about his mother much.

He doesn't remember the days when his father could barely move for grief, doesn't remember the days when he lay unattended in his cot as his father sought oblivion at the bottom of a wine barrel. He's heard the occasional whisper in town and seen the disapproving eyes of the older palace workers, but he doesn't _really_ understand. He is only eight, and his father is as loving as any should be, now.

One day, in the painfully small hours, Daedalus wakes him with a gentle nudge and a smile. His father speaks softly, so as not to shatter the dreamlike hues of early morning.

"I want to show you something,” he says. “Come on.”

So, still bleary from slumber, Icarus clambers to his sleepy feet and follows his father out into the twilight. The sky is still dark, but from behind the distant crest of hills rosy fingers blossom up the horizon. The whole landscape is painted in brightening splashes of colour and, though his expression remains masked by shadow, Icarus can see his father's outline clearly in the growing light. The man sits himself carefully on the low wall that guards the path's edge and pats the spot next to him.

“You okay to get up here on your own?”

Icarus nods as he rubs his eyes. After all, he’s a big boy now – nearly nine years old! – so he can do it by himself. He climbs up onto the wall carefully and kicks his legs out over the drop like his father. It is a dozen metres down to the ground below, but Icarus has never been afraid of heights.

"You alright?" his father asks him. At his answering nod, Daedalus points out at the vista before them. "It won't be long now, watch."

So Icarus does. Just as his father said, it is only moments before dawn's flowered touch kisses the entire sky. The sun peaks its blinding-bright face over the hilltops and everything bursts into golden flame: the firmament a hundred shades of glorious, orange-bathed colour. Icarus stares, utterly enraptured as the heavens explode with light above him. He hears his father exhale, long and slow.

"Your mother used to sit and watch the sunrise every morning," he says. He is so quiet that, at first, Icarus isn't entirely certain he'd even spoken at all. "She'd wake up every day at this awful hour, when it was still dark, and find some perch outside to watch the sun break over the horizon. It drove me up the wall, once, because she'd sometimes wake me up too with all her jostling about– but–" he breaks off, eyes misty and throat bobbing precariously. When he speaks again, his voice is thick. "One morning I watched it with her and I saw her face in the dawn light and–– she was so peaceful, so in awe of this simple beauty that so many take for granted and I–– I just fell in love with her all over again."

His father says no more and turns his face up to gaze at the clouds, soaked pink in the sun's blush.

 

* * *

 

He is twelve and the workshop is all sunlight. Dust particles float luminous in the rays of airborne gold that stream through the wide, wide windows and Icarus can't look away. His father is hunched over his bench, sketching and humming over the schematics for the dance floor he is constructing. It's faultless, Icarus knows, and his father is fretting unnecessarily over it. He has created far more impossible things out of far less, but _this_ creation is for Ariadne and so Icarus cannot fault him for wanting it to be more than perfect.

He should be helping – is meant to be helping – but there's something so enchanting about the light. He waves a freckled hand through the beam gently and the glowing motes flurry. His skin warms wherever the gold soaks it.

"Icarus?" his father says, though he doesn't turn around. “The ruler?"

Icarus jumps.

"Sorry, Dad!" he says, abashed even though his father's tone hadn't been accusatory, and hurries to rifle through the storage. The ruler is retrieved, but Icarus remains distracted until night bleeds the light silver instead.

 

* * *

_Then it goes like this:_

_the sun, silhouetted among a hazy summer's yellow flowers; secrets dipped rich in gold and heat; lips softer than honey and warmer than flame._

* * *

 

He is fifteen when he meets him.

The day is bright as the Queen's circlet, cloudless and heat-hazy, and the ground is baked beneath his feet. A breeze whispers through the tall, bleached grass; the wildflowers' bright yellow heads sway in the summer's gentle breath.

Icarus has escaped the workshop to take a walk through the countryside beyond the city walls. The palace's oppressive air and the constant slick of sweat on his skin had left him feeling frayed, unfocussed, and he is hoping the open space might help sharpen his mind.

He does not expect to meet a god on his stroll.

It is at a curve in the well-worn path, where it slopes around the peak of a rocky outcrop, that he finds him.  The view from the point is particularly lovely – straight out across the gulf, Dia just visible as a smudge on the horizon. Icarus sees his figure from afar and at first assumes him to be another traveller; but as he draws closer he comes to know, somehow, that the man admiring the scenery below is no mere passerby.

The stranger turns at the sound of his footsteps, and Icarus's breath catches in his chest. He has never seen someone so beautiful. With hair like coils of captured sunlight and skin rich as the earth under his toes, he is almost otherworldly. Youth glitters in his eyes, glows around his frame, and he appears around the same age as Icarus himself.

"Hello," he says, voice nectar-sweet. "I didn't think I’d see anyone up here.”            

Icarus’s heart flutters against his ribs. There is a breathtaking beauty in the boy’s bearing: in the curve of his spine, in the angle of his head.

Suddenly, Icarus feels quite lost for words. “Sorry, I was just—” he flaps a hand about awkwardly – “walking.”

“I can see that.” The beautiful boy raises an eyebrow, a smirk on his lips. “May I ask your name, walker?”

Warmth blooms across Icarus’s cheeks, but there is no cruelty in the words. “Icarus.”

The boy smiles again, and his face is like sunshine. “It seems the Fates have crossed our paths, Icarus. I am Helios.”

In a wave of horrified realisation, Icarus falls to his knees and bows. “My apologies, my Lord! I did not mean to offend—”

There is a sound like light breaking through cloud. Icarus’s heart leaps, and he glances up to see the boy-god's face wide with laughter

“Offend? Not at all.” Helios extends a dark, delicate hand, “and that is unnecessary.”

For a heartbeat, Icarus can only stare. It is almost difficult to look at directly at him, for the deathless god is naught but glorious radiance. He had never wondered how the Sun might look like, but now, gazing up at him silhouetted white-gold against the light, Icarus cannot fathom ever beholding anything more dazzling.

He takes Helios’s hand – a feeling soft under his skin, as though he is floating, as though for a moment he is becoming otherworldly himself – and is pulled to his feet.

Gently, he falls back to earth as Helios speaks again. “Would you mind a companion on this walk of yours, Icarus?”

It takes Icarus a second to regain his tongue. But then he replies, in an echo of the god: "not at all."

 

* * *

 

He is nearly sixteen and he has told no one about Helios’s visits.

His father is distracted endlessly by his creations, often involved in his own head for hours at a time; it is easy to keep secrets from him. Ariadne is a little more difficult, but she never asks and so he never tells. It is odd, sometimes, for he is so unreserved about everything else – but there is something about _this_ that he wants to keep private. As if sharing would tarnish the feeling it brings, would dirty the golden-bright hues.

Since their first meeting, up in the Knossian hills, Helios has become a fixture in Icarus’s life. He appears reasonably regularly, though Icarus does not entirely know why. Sometimes he drops in when Icarus is tinkering in the workshop, and his father and Ariadne are occupied elsewhere. Other times, the god falls into step beside him when he is out in the city around the agora.

But Icarus’s favourite visits, the ones he holds closest, are the ones when Helios meets him out in the hills. They wander, roaming the rocks and trees, and talk of everything and nothing. The hours are steeped sweet in bountiful daylight that seems to last forever.

It is during one such visit, as they sit side-by-side against the twisted trunk of a huge oak, that Helios presses his palm to Icarus’s and laces their fingers together. He looks at Icarus, a question in his shining eyes.

Heart aglow, Icarus squeezes his hand and drops his head down to rest on Helios's shoulder.

 

* * *

 

He is sixteen exactly.

The sky is an endless expanse of blue and the sun hangs high and dazzling as always. His feet move swiftly, bare soles dusting across the warm stones with a clumsy but joyful spring, and Ariadne laughs brilliantly beside him as her the red of her skirt swishes about her legs like flowing wine. It is just them alone on her dance floor, the one his father made her years ago, but Icarus does not care. He needs no grand party or elaborate feast to celebrate. He just needs this: him and his best friend, laughing and dancing without a care.

Eventually they sprawl, breathless, onto the ground, faces flushed and backs sweaty against the floor. Ariadne props her feet up on his stomach; he shoves them off weakly.

"Hey, put your smelly feet on someone else."

Even from this angle he can see her grin as she lifts her legs, only to prod him teasingly in the side with her toes. "Whose feet are smelly? I am a _princess_ , I'll have you know. My feet smell only of blossom and the finest olive oil."

His laughter aches his still-heaving lungs. "Sure."

"I can't believe you're sixteen already," she says. "Seems like only yesterday we were tiny and playing on the beach."

 "You were a better dancer than me back then, too."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, you learnt pretty quickly."

"I had the best teacher."

His best friend smiles and a comfortable silence falls between them. They gaze up at the sky, bathing in the day's heat. When she speaks again it is softer, rawer – a chill creeps into the easy feeling of before.

"I'm scared. I– I don't want to leave."

Pain pinches in Icarus's chest. He reaches for her hand, hoping to bring her some kind of comfort. "I'll come with you, if you want. Perhaps whichever prince your father chooses for you wouldn't mind a new royal craftsman."

Ariadne squeezes his hand tight and Icarus clutches right back. He has missed her so very much these past few weeks, while she has been caught up in the sudden discussion of her inevitable marriage, and he cannot imagine ever watching her leave Crete without following close behind.

He climbs to his feet and tugs her up after him.

"Come on," he says, "I bet we can find a musician to play some actual _music_ to dance to."

At that, she smiles again.

It is later, once Ariadne has been summoned to dinner, that Icarus sets out into the hills. The sun is sinking, descending towards the horizon on a bed of blazing orange, and everything is hazed in honey and gold. He is not looking for Helios exactly – more in search of the peaceful escape beyond the city walls than anything – but he finds him nonetheless.

His god is lazing against the trunk of their tree, head tipped up to the sky and the golden light dappled across his skin, as unfairly beautiful as ever. For a heartbeat, Icarus simply looks. It is moments like these he wishes he could capture in amber: could preserve in heavenly detail every curve of Helios's body; every ripple of light; every nuance of vivid colour.

Helios opens one languid eyelid and a gentle grin curls at his lips. "Am I really so beautiful that you can’t even sit down?"

"Bold to assume I was looking at you," Icarus replies, his heart fluttering like the rays of gold sifting through the leaves overhead. "Maybe I was admiring the rosemary. It’s particularly lovely here."

"Ah of course, the rosemary," Helios laughs. He extends a hand out to Icarus, "come here, rosemary boy."

Icarus is quite certain he'll never get over the warm softness of Helios's touch. It is as if sunlight runs through his veins – perhaps it does.

He slides into place beside him; leans his cheek upon the god's shoulder. "Ariadne is to be married off soon."

"Minos has settled it?"

"No," he says as he rests his legs along the length of Helios's. Lanky as he is, the soles of his feet reach just past his god's toes. "But he has been talking about it. Ariadne isn't sure when he'll choose."

Helios's fingers thread familiarly through his own and he tugs Icarus closer, humming like a well-strung lyre. "Minos is an indecisive man. It's Pasiphaë who will ultimately guide his hand, and she will not choose a terrible husband. Have faith in that."

Though it does not vanish, his words ease the weight in Icarus's chest a little.

They sit there a while longer, the god and the boy, talking about endless nothings until the sun has nearly dipped completely below the westerly plains and the honey melts into shades of blue.

"I'm sixteen today," Icarus finally says.

Helios twiddles with their tangled fingers. "I know."                                                                              

Icarus is not entirely sure where he meant to go on this train of thought, what he intended to say – but before a silence can stretch between them, Helios encircles his jaw with one tender, fire-bright hand and pulls his lips to his own.

They are just as soft and warm as the rest of him, Icarus discovers, and he is bewitched by them just as entirely.

 

* * *

  _And then like this:_

_a foreboding unmoved by sunlight under the stars; frayed darkness and cold, cold touch; light! light and wax and heat and burning – and a fall._

* * *

 

He is halfway to seventeen and he does not trust Theseus of Athens.

The foreign prince walks with a swagger entirely at odds with his situation, and watches Ariadne with a look that sends prickles crawling over Icarus's nape. It is almost predatory when Ariadne has her back turned, he thinks. Like a wildcat stalking prey; like a hound sighting game. He wants to warn her, tries to _tell_ her, but she is so incandescent, high on the prince's ocean-deep eyes and saccharine tones, that the words roll off her like water on wax.

She is unreachable. And Icarus has no idea what to do.

It is the night before the Athenians are to be sent below, into the bowels of his father's Labyrinth, when Helios drops in through his window. It is unusual for him to visit when the moon has risen, but not unheard of.

_(Icarus had asked him once, just who was driving his chariot if the god himself spent the day on earth. Helios had answered, brazen as anything, that trusted acolytes were for just such a purpose, and that Icarus was far more enticing, besides.)_

He hops off the window ledge and grins at him, raising his brows. "My my, Icarus, don't get up to greet me too fast."

Icarus remains prone, his head turned to watch his god's bright face. He gives a half-hearted smile, but makes no attempt to move. "This is me, not getting up too fast."

The previous merriment melts off Helios's countenance. He strides forward, expression pinching into a frown, and comes to a worried crouch at Icarus's bedside. Even in the moonlight he is somehow all sunshine. Sunshine and warmth and life.

"What has happened?" he asks, brushing a lock of hair from Icarus's eyes. He has always thought his hair looks even redder against the dark of Helios's skin; nearly as fire-bright as his god's touch. He presses his cheek into Helios's palm.

"The Athenians are being sacrificed tomorrow."

"Is that not a good thing? Aegeus's son will be gone."

Icarus shakes his head, a nag that won't abate gnawing in his gut. "I think so, but... Ariadne's been so distant, I don't– I don't trust that everything will be so simple."

Helios cradles his face. His thumb strokes over Icarus's jaw, warm and reassuring, and he presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Get some sleep, beloved. Everything will look brighter after dawn."

 

* * *

 

He is not entirely sure how old he is. Seventeen? No – sixteen. Yes? Still sixteen.

He remembers being sixteen, and it surely cannot have been so long since those sunlight memories. Trapped within these dark stone walls, time feels abstract. Unsalvageable. It cannot pass when there is so little… anything. Just these walls; these torch brackets; this creaky, barred doorway. Everything feels frayed, like the loose threads of a tapestry rent down the middle. He wants to think, _needs_ to think as he knows he _can_ ¸ but his mind just ends up circling and circling in the dark until the threads get ensnared in the room’s windowless confines.

There are things he holds onto desperately, but it’s like trying to re-spin the tapestry as it frantically unravels. He cannot keep up. Ariadne is–– _where?_ His father didn’t–– _what?_ He cannot stomach the darkness because–– _why?_

And so he simply sits.

(In the dark.)

And counts the wall's stones.

(In the dark.)

And loses track.

(In the dark.)

And recounts.

(In the dark.)

_He needs the sunlight because––_

The door creaks open, though he does not know when (how long has it been, now?), and suddenly, as if stepping directly out of his tapestry, his father is there. The man rushes over; pulls him into a tight embrace. His father's body feels thin and frail against him – surely much more than it used to – and the man shakes as he squeezes him, strange, gurgling gasps escaping his lips.

“Father?” he asks, voice raspy from disuse.

“ _Icarus,”_ Daedalus chokes, “Icarus– _Icarus._ I’m getting us out of here, I _swear_ I am _._ Just a little longer – a little longer, son, I promise.”

“Longer?” Icarus says. He thinks and thinks and _thinks_ but the thread just knots and knots and knots and–– when is longer–– ? _When is longer?_

“Icarus?” Daedalus says again, but it sounds like a question this time – is it a question?

“It’s so dark,” for what other answer is there? “It’s so dark.”

“Son, the torches are blazing. It is bright as Eos in here.”

What? No – is his father blind? It is so dark: dim and full of flickering shadows that dance wickedly like ghosts. That is not brightness. Brightness is the orange of the burning sky; the beams filtered though the clouds; the silhouette of gold; the heat of hands and lips.

“Icarus?”

He is about to respond – to tell his father his _mistake_ , it’s so _dark –_ when a guard shoulders into his cell, face a uniform scowl.

“Alright Athenian, time to go.”

 _Athenian?_ No. The Athenians were– _Ariadne was–_

Daedalus freezes, his whole body slackening in horror. “No. No– you said I could see him. Minos said I could see him!"

"And now you have." The guard strides forward, wraps iron fingers around his thin arms, and Daedalus lets out a guttural kind of wail.

His father clutches at him with weathered hands, keening like a man possessed, but all Icarus can think about is the coldness in his feeble grip. It feels as if his strength has been leeched from his bones and replaced by ice, and it spikes something sharp under Icarus’s skin. He remembers warm caresses and sunlight touches – heat and light and beauty caught in gold and– _and–_

The thread snags.

"No–! _No!"_

Despite his father's desperate struggling, the guard wrenches him away easily. Icarus stumbles – blinks – as Daedalus's nails tear at his tunic.

"Icarus! _Icarus–_ it's okay. It's _okay– I'll get you out–"_

He wants to reach out, wants to reassure his pale-faced father and smooth his tear-tracked cheeks, but the thread snags again and Icarus instead has to reach out and grab the wall for support. _And… a n  d–– ?_

“ _Icarus!”_

 

* * *

 

He is just shy of seventeen, his father tells him, and the light is so gold it feels like breathing again.

Perched on the ledge, winged arms extended, it bathes him like a lover's caress. The drop looks much smaller than when he was eight and kicking his legs out to watch the sunrise, but Icarus isn't afraid. Perhaps he should be, he supposes. His father certainly is.

Daedalus is sicker than Icarus can recall ever seeing him – though he doesn't much trust his recollection these days. Everything is still frayed and fuzzy, but he doesn't think his father was so frail or pallid before. He doesn't think he himself was either.

A distant, quiet part of him is worried: will his father manage this with such weak limbs?  Can his body endure it? It is his old self that frets, Icarus thinks: his old self still clinging on in the tattered remains of his mind. He wants to reach out, to pull this old self – this _unfrayed self –_ back to shore, but he cannot find the rope. He can only hear the voice, faraway and muffled.

The him that is now, however, only feels is elation. The him that is present, that is anchored as much as the fraying lets him be, only feels the golden kiss on his skin; his heart blooming yellow wildflowers in his chest.

"Now Icarus," his father says, double-checking the fastenings on Icarus's waxen wings, "listen to me carefully. You must not fly too low, or too high – keep to the middle, alright? The water will clog the wings' feathers, and the sun will melt the wax. Do you understand? Fly straight between the sea and the sky."

Icarus laughs, still high on the sun's glorious touch.  It feels familiar, he knows it does. Like honeyed kisses and scorching fingertips.

"Between the sea and the sky."

Daedalus nods tremulously. His hands are shaking, Icarus notices, though he does not know why they should be. He should worry for himself – Icarus could never falter with the Sun embracing him gold.

"We should go, before they catch us. Minos's guards will come to take you back to your cell at any moment."

Icarus spreads his wings, the contraptions feeling far lighter than they should, and stares up into the waiting sky. Richly blue, patterned with clouds like the prints of a wagon; the sun high above dapples the pale tracks with gleaming yellows and whites. For a moment, Icarus sees an image: a dark face, tilted up and rippling with golden light mottled through the treetops. But then his father takes his face in his hands and presses a kiss against his brow, long and firm.

The image dances out of reach.

"You follow me, alright?" His father says. "No higher, no lower."

Suddenly the workshop's curtain is wrenched open, almost ripping from its hooks. Two guards storm in, their swords brandished. At the sight of Icarus and his father – perched as they are on the ledge, bedecked in fantastic manmade wings – they pale; let out an outraged bellows.

"Go!" Daedalus cries. " _Fly,_ Icarus!"

He throws himself off the edge of the wall and, for one horrifying moment, Icarus watches his father plummet. But then he outstretches his winged arms and _soars._

Icarus does not think – he just leaps.

He never was afraid of heights.

It is not anything he can describe: the wind rushing past him; the air biting his skin; the feathers fluttering madly. He extends himself, arced and sharp as the path of an arrow, and his wings catch the current. He cuts through the sky as a bird.

He sees his father up ahead, miraculously aloft on his feeble limbs. He stays close behind. Below him the fields of Crete pass quickly – quicker than Icarus has ever travelled before. Knossos' palace walls fade fast behind them and the mountains and grassland whisk by, the coast drawing ever closer. They pass over the woods, the tree, the beach–

Dancing in the sands; hours spent kissing under the oak–

The images are right– _there_ – _!_

Icarus laughs, perhaps a little maniacally, but the wind catches it at his lips and carries it away. Maybe this is how Cycnus felt, in that heartbeat when he was neither boy nor swan, but a human caught on feathered wings.

They fly over the blue-green waves, swirling and roiling beneath them, salt thick in the air and the day hot on their backs. Sweat rolls down his neck and his father keeps glancing back, but Icarus does not mind. He gazes down at lands he has never seen before. Island after island goes by. Everything is colour. Icarus fancies he sees a fisherman staring up at them in awe; a ploughman, pointing at them from far below.

For a brief moment, as they pass the largest island so far, he swears he sees a flash of red – red like a skirt of wine; red like a ball of crimson thread.

The wind buffets him and a memory – something important, somehow he _knows_ it's _important_ _–_ is blown out of reach again.

Soon the islands fade into the distance and it is only the sea underneath them, vast and blue. It leaps at them with watery tongues and, for the first time, Icarus's heart jumps into his throat. It is dark down there. Poseidon's realm goes deep, deep, deeper – where the sun scatters in the water until it disappears.

He beats his winged arms, climbing up and away from the yawning dark, closer to the heat at his back. It feels safe and welcoming, despite the scorch over his skin. His father hasn't turned to check on him in a while, Icarus realises – perhaps he is finally as tired as his body looks – but he can still see his gaunt frame ahead of him. Icarus glances up.

– and nearly cries out.

The sun – the _Sun!_

It is high above, but he can almost make out the shape of a chariot. Four tossing horses rear at its prow, all as bright and gleaming as polished gold, and in the basket stands a figure, shining so brightly Icarus cannot see any more than their outline.

But he knows him. He _knows_ him– _his_ _god–_

He soars higher, a strange pressure in his chest tugging him closer, _closer_. The chariot has stopped – and – glorious, _glorious –_ the driver's face comes into view as he stares down over the side. He drops a hand from the reins and reaches out, expression wrenched in such horror the light seems to dim for a moment.

But Icarus is blind. All he sees is _Helios Helios Helios_ and all he feels is golden – incandescent. He is flying through the heavens like one of the gods, the world laid out as a map before his eyes, and finally, finally, _he_ is here _._ The thread weaves clean. He _remembers. Helios–_

It is hot. The slick of sweat has dried up, and his skin begins to feel like it is melting from his bones. But, in the blurred, fractured state of Icarus's mind, it seems trivial. How could the feeble limitations of his mortal body do anything to stop this divine ascension?

He rises up, up, _up._ Helios’s radiant face fills his vision, fills his mind, and he doesn’t notice as his skin burns. Doesn’t notice as the wings’ straps dry and crack. Doesn’t notice as the wax starts to melt; drips onto his arms; scalds his pallid, freckled flesh.

“ _Icarus!”_

Through the blinding light that consumes his mind, Icarus hears Helios’s voice. It’s been so long – _so long –_ and at the sound his thoughts become sunlit hours, golden caresses, fire-bright kisses. He aches. _Oh,_ Helios, god above all–

The feathers fall, one by one.

Still, Icarus climbs.

They shed like raindrops: fluttering loose from the softening waxwork and tumbling through the sky beneath him. Down, down, _down._ His wings thin, moulting their delicate plumage faster and faster, but still Icarus does not change course. He is barely aware at all – bewitched as he is by his love; faraway as his fractured mind sets him. 

He is nearly there – nearly _there,_ he thinks. Helios's hand looks so close, so in reach, and he stretches out his own to catch it, to feel his lover's blazing touch again.

But then there is flame.

It licks up his extended arms, devouring the wings' ribs, the fastenings, the final layers of feather. It burns. His skin screams – sizzles. The wax runs in boiling rivets along the green lines of his veins.

"Icarus! _Icarus– no! NO!"_

The air tastes like burning.

The Sun gilds his vision in fire as he falls.                                

                                                                                                                            

* * *

  _It ends like this:_

_down_

_down_

_d_

_o_

_w_

_n_

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone who may not know, Helios is basically the OG sun god (Titan, technically) -- Apollo was originally a separate entity, but he later become more or less conflated with Helios and took on the sun-like attributes, especially in Roman accounts (apparently). There's a couple of different reasons I went with Helios rather than Apollo, but you probably don't care about them all too much (tho if you are interested, feel free to ask lololol)
> 
> feedback is always, always, always appreciated! Hope you guys enjoyed. lemme know ur thoughts, if you want x


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